Alastria, Human Transmuter: Sendai's Enclave- The Rise of Simmy Alastria, Part 1
Alastria has routinely used PI in this run. Simulacrum, not so much. That's a common pattern in my arcane runs. Simulacrums, with their nerfy books, never seemed worth the effort to me. I played around with them from time to time, sure, but they were never a core part of my plan. Not until now, not until Alastria v3.
So: What's so special about Alastria v3? Why are Simulacrums suddenly a strong play for her, where they hadn't been for my characters in the past? Simple: Alastria is a Transmuter, and PIs aren't what they used to be.
When I ran Alastria v1, many years ago, PIs would lose their inability to make physical attacks once they were shapechanged. Accordingly, a PI could cast IA, take a full set of buffs, flip to mind flayer form and then go to town. Better yet, summoning a magically created weapon, like a Black Blade of Disaster, would not kick you out of your shape change form, allowing a Tensered mind flaying PI to wield a Black Blade of Disaster (scroll) at 8APR. That, incidentally, is how Alastria v1 defeated Abazigal. He succumbed to an endless stream of Black Blade of Disaster wielding mind flayers, each taking a shot at wish resting up a new book before charging into battle.
Times have changed. Shapechanged PIs can no longer make physical attacks. PIs can't use scrolls. And, finally, magically created weapons now kick you out of your Shapechange forms. The Black Blade of Disaster wielding mind flayer army is a thing of the past. Ok, but what about Simulacrums?
A Simulacrum will never be as powerful as the Black Blade of Disaster wielding mindflayer PIs of old, but they're not useless either. And even with the EEs inexplicable decision to force spell book ordering alphabetically, there's a way to order a book to a Simmy's benefit. Black Blade of Disaster, Improved Alacrity, Summon Planetar, Wish x 2. That leaves the Simmy with BBoD and Improved Alacrity. Perfect. And just like that, our Transmuter, Alastria, has a plan for Sendai and her magic resistant minions. PIs on Ruby Ray, Wish and Planetar duty; Simulacrums charging into the fray, Tensered with a BBoD.
We'll see how that all played out soon enough. First, let's talk about the Enclave.
This was a brain munching good time.
In the opening battles we skipped the fineries and launched straight into a Shapechange assault. Standard buffs here. In these minor encounters, Alastria's lack of Abjuration spells is largely irrelevant. Her arcane foes don't have the levels to dispel her. He melee foes don't last long enough to wear through Alastria's Stoneskins and MIs.
As for the spell damage risk, Mirroring handles that, leaving a combined assault as the only risk. Were this a proper no reload, I'd be more conscientious about using the Ring of Minor Spell Turning and SotM Spell Trap to serve as Breach stoppers.
Interesting, I've seen very few Breach attempts. Perhaps the mages are detecting Mirroring along with the lack of specific protections, and deciding against helping out their melee weapon wielding allies? I'm not sure. I will say that True Sight->Breach would definitely make like more interesting for Alastria, as would skipping Mirroring.
Speaking of Mirroring, it's ridiculous. I was right to restrict it in the past, wrong to use it here. I'm going to allow Alastria to continue using it, since this isn't a real run and she's already sullied herself with it, but it's majorly uncool. I'm pleased to say that all my prior successful characters skipped it, with the exception of Astrid, at the very end, when she decided to take the gloves off against at the Throne.
Anyhoo, back to the action. Rare appearance by the fire elemental form here against the brain drain immune, +1 weapon wielding skeleton warrior.
On to the umber hulks and mushroom heaven. Interesting, the mushrooms and umbers can take more mind flayer hits than the drow. 4 versus 2. You may think of yourselves as the master race, drow, but you're dumber than mushrooms and it's not even close.
See? This sergeant of yours or whatever only took 2 hits.
We took the derro route to Diayatha. Since we hadn't rebuffed since the woodcutter, Shapechange ran out by the time we reached the end of tunnel. No matter. Alastria's book is still basically full, save for the buff spells.
By now we were running out of opportunities to test our Simmy ideas in advance of Sendai. And so we headed back to the PP for a nappy-poo before taking on the next crew.
We opened with a Mordy x 2, Simulacrum Chain. Here we see Simmy Alastria, running her defensive buffs, conjuring additional Mordies in preparation for the assault.
Time to layer in the offensive buffs, including the BBoD.
Simmy Alastria engages. Her IA is still active so she can dump her Shocking Grasp.
The real Alastria thins the herd with a Skull Trap barrage. With the Skull Traps deployed, we're free to call in the planetar.
The real Alastria pulls her Sequencer and joins the fray. We're rocking a BBoD here instead of Shapechange because we're testing out our new configuration at 9, the one we intend to use against Sendai.
Alastria and her Simmy finishing off the last of the drow. Note that neither Alastria nor her Simmy are Tensered here. That's ok for Alastria, who has access to DuHM, but Simmy Alastria really should be running Tenser's. It's a bummer Tenser's is so far down the alphabet, but we can make that work. In the end Alastria went with IH x2, Mislead, Tenser's x 3 and True Sight at 6.
Resting up again before Odamaron, we tried out a new contingency setup: Mislead, PI, Hakeashar x 2.
The real Alastria is semi-exposed here against an invisibility detecting high level arcane caster, but Mirroring has us mostly covered on defense end and we feel like Odamaron has enough on his plate. Since I'm still playing with the classic HLA allocation system, we won't see Summon Planetar from Odamaron. If that were a possibility, we would not have bothered with PI here. The risk reward would have been unfavorable. In truth, I probably shouldn't have bothered with it at all anyways. There's little risk of running out of spells here.
Planetar gets the kill.
Since Ogremoch has a dispelling weapon, we used Time Stop here.
I had hoped to wipe out Diayatha's crew, notably the hive mother, on the same Time Stop, but the hive mother managed to sneak in a ProMW, despite the stoppage of time. We took down Diayatha and the vamp, dropped a planetar and got the rock out of dodge.
(Oh, and btw, for those who are puzzling over my inconsistent capitalization of planetar, I use Planetar to refer to the spell, planetar to refer to the creature. Deviations are typos.)
Happily, the demons TWEd over to Ogremoch's chamber where they could be brain drained. As for the hive mother, she fell to skeleton warriors. Had I prepared for this contingency, we would have had a Farsight in our book. Since I hadn't, we ended up creeping into Anti-Magic Ray range, hence the lack of buffs on Alastria here.
In Mithykyl's lair it was mind flayer y mind flayer, mano y mano.
Until Mithykyl showed up, that is, at which point we cast TS. We didn't bother flipping back because Mithy was already badly injured at this point.
All that remains is Sendai herself. And the statues. And her drow army. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully Simmy Alastria is up to the challenge.
Best,
A.
.